The Eurozone Crisis: Financial Firewalls and the Impact on the U.S. Economy

Apr23

Date: 04/23/2012

Dr. Hans-Werner Sinn, President of the Ifo Institute and Professor of Economics and Public Finance at the University of Munich (LMU), will be offering insights into the current Eurozone crisis in a discussion titled, “The Eurozone Crisis: Financial Firewalls and the Impact on the U.S. Economy” on Monday, April 23, 2012 in New York City. The event is generously co-sponsored by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and the German American Chambers of Commerce.

In his lecture, Dr. Sinn will give an overview of the European bailout measures as well as recent purchasing of government bonds and the option for countries to help themselves via money creation. He will also talk about how as a result of these measures, the German Bundesbank exposed Germany to around €600 billion of debt by the end of 2011 by taking all bailout packages for GIPS countries and Italy into account. Dr. Sinn argues that it is the ECB Council and not the German Parliament who is responsible for deciding how to use the funds. Dr. Sinn credits this to the result of a system failure which poses a serious threat to the German economy by forcing it to make concessions in negotiations over bailout packages.

Dr. Sinn is one of Europe’s leading voices amidst the debates over the Euro crisis. He is the Director of the University of Munich’s Center for Economic Studies and Director of CESifo, a member of the Council of Economic Advisors to the German Ministry of Economics as well as former president of the International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF). Dr. Sinn holds honorary doctorate degrees of the universities of Magdeburg and Helsinki, and has been honored with the Maximilians Order. He is the author of more than 20 monographs and 135 scientific articles.